20. Edward S. Casey: Place, Body and Emotion

Peter speaks to the philosopher Edward S. Casey about the philosophy of place and the ecology of emotion, drawing insights from Casey’s bookTurning Emotion Inside Out: Affective Life Beyond the Subject (Northwestern University Press, 2021). Central to their discussion is the concept of eco-affectivity, the idea that emotions are deeply rooted in and shaped by our environment. Why then does place matter today? Where do emotions come from? How are our hearts and minds already embedded in the landscape that surrounds us? To what extent is an emotion an environmentally oriented phenomenon? These questions guide a broader reflection on how art can reveal the emotional atmosphere of place in ways that language alone cannot.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:35) Who is Ed Casey?

(07:32) How Casey’s upbringing influenced his ideas on place

(11:22) Why place matters

(18:24) How our sense of place is heightened by illness

(22:50) To what extent is a landscape an extension of the body?

(27:30) Where do emotions come from? 

(40:05) Remembering Mikel Dufrenne

(45:00) The extraversion of emotion

(53:41) The problem with subjective accounts of emotion

(58:22) How is the emotional atmosphere of place shaped by the artist’s state of mind?

(1:08:05) Is the pictorial view of the world the same space that our bodies live, feel and experience? 

(1:18:19) The historical dimension of emotion